Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove

 

This book starts out as a pretty witty take on Classic Horror Monsters in an SFnal setting (well, aboard an interstellar ship) and in some ways it never really gets away from that. The wit, however seemed to mostly fade over the last couple hundred pages--which is reasonable, the primary joke had staled for me by that point. The prose still had some sparkle, and the romantic arcs were clearly the primary focus in the back half of the book. It's always interesting seeing someone try to have multiple plague-analog monsters in the same place and time; I'm not sure there's anything in classical vampire (or werewolf) lore pointing the way the author leans here, but I suspect story needs were more important to her. There are all sorts of Easter eggs for people who know the stories of the various Universal monsters, both on film and in print; Lovecraft's Deep Ones are arguably a bit of a clash with the rest of it. The novel as a whole barely holds together, it only avoids being a jumble by a hair's breadth. Truelove seems to have a better handle both on Horror and SF (and science) than Barnes did, but there's still more than a little mushiness around the edges here. Readable and fun, not deathless; honestly, probably fifty or a hundred pages too long.